I think public administration is a science because it involves the study of government decision making and policies, which can help to produce more policies. Science is also defined as the study of something or the pursuit of knowledge on public administration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_administration has more details on public administration.
Public administration is not a science or an art. Public administration is known as a "craft" for many reasons. It is not science because there isn't an entirely correct way of doing it, there are no equations that will constitute efficiency or effectiveness for sure. Science is all about facts,
The Study of Administration Woodrow Wilson November 1, 1886 An Essay I suppose that no practical science is ever studied where there is no need to know it. The very fact, therefore, that the eminently practical science of administration is finding its way into college courses in this country would
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At a first glance it seems easier to accept public administration as an art. It is just the administration of Government affairs and for most part it does not follow the laws of Science like absence of normative value, predictability of behavior and universal application. So, does that mean we cannot list it into a respectable category of scientific subjects?
There are many authors who ferociously defended it and argued that public administration as an area of study is indeed a Science. The earliest of them was Lorenz von Stein an 1855, a German professor from Vienna who said that public administration is an integrated Science and viewing it just as administrative laws was a restrictive definition. In modern times, categorizing public administration as Science found favor with many, the most important one being the father of American public administration, President Woodrow Wilson. We shall read more about the Wilsonian view of public administration